[T]he minister preached a sermon on Jonah and the whale, at the end of which an old chief arose and declared, "We have heard sever...al of the white people talk and lie; we know they will lie, but this is the biggest lie we ever heard."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

I reside at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;I am not up to small deceit, or any sinful games;...And I'll tell in simple language what I know about the rowThat broke up our society upon the Stanislow.But first I would remark, that it is not a proper planFor any scientific man to whale his fellow-man,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Ishmael's thought consciously extends itself to get behind the world of appearances; he wants to see and to understand everything.... Ahab's drive is to prove, not to discover; the world that tortures Ishmael by its horrid vacancy has tempted Ahab into thinking he can make it over. He seeks to dominate nature, to impose and inflict his will on the outside world--whether it be the crew that must jump to his orders or the great white whale that is essentially indifferent to him. As Ishmael is all rumination, so Ahab is all will. Both are thinkers, the difference being that Ishmael thinks as a bystander, has identified his own state with man's utter unimportance in nature. Ahab, by contrast, actively seeks the whale in order to assert man's supremacy over what swims before him as "the monomaniac incarnation" of a superior power.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Women are the fulfilled sex. Through our children we are able to produce our own immortality, so we lack that divine restlessness ...which sends men charging off in pursuit of fortune or fame or an imagined Utopia. That is why we number so few geniuses among us. The wholesome oyster wears no pearl, the healthy whale no ambergris, and as long as we can keep on adding to the race, we harbor a sort of health within ourselves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

I love all men who dive. Any fish can swim near the surface, but it takes a great whale to go down stairs five miles or more; & if... he don't attain the bottom, why, all the lead in Galena can't fashion the plummet that will.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

... women can never do efficient and general service in hospitals until their dress is prescribed by laws inexorable as those of t...he Medes and Persians. Then, that dress should be entirely destitute of steel, starch, whale-bone, flounces, and ornaments of all descriptions; should rest on the shoulders, have a skirt from the waist to the ankle, and a waist which leaves room for breathing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »